Two Rivers (8 page)

We talked about school, about the new Everly Brothers album, about Jack Kerouac and whether or not anyone would ever travel to outer space. We even talked about what we would miss. “Double Delights,” Betsy said. (You could only get them from the ice-cream truck that drove through our neighborhood at dusk on summer evenings.)

“Chicken croquettes.” I nodded. My father made them, with thick creamy gravy.

“Smoking candy cigarettes on the train tracks.”

“Sugar on snow,” I said. (Sugar on snow is hot maple syrup on clean white snow. It makes a sort of sticky candy. You eat it followed by a dill pickle and then a plain doughnut. It’s one of the best things about spring in Vermont.)

“They’ve got that in Maine.”

“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten for a minute about Maine.

“Spying on Mr. Lowe,” she said. She smiled a little wistfully. “My tree.”

The fire was burning low. I followed Betsy into the tent and accepted when she offered me half of her unzipped sleeping bag. We lay on our backs staring up at the roof of the tent, the edges of our bodies just touching: the sides of our hands, our hips, our ankles. The sleeping bag was heavy and warm. My skin, where it touched hers, felt electric.

“I’ll miss my dad, “she said softly.

“Um-hm,” I said, nodding in the darkness. I wanted to squeeze her hand, let her know that I was having second thoughts too, but I worried it would break the spell.

We lay there for a long time, and I waited for her to sit up, laugh, say, “It’s too cold. Let’s go home.” But it only got darker and quieter, and soon the cadence of her breathing changed. She was asleep. And I knew that we
weren’t
going home. We were running away. For real. I must have laid there for hours, listening to her breathe, trying to discern any restlessness, any fear. But remarkably, Betsy kept sleeping.

Soon I was cold, freezing cold, and I imagined Betsy (had she been awake) would have been cold too. My mother had also taught me the dangers of hypothermia, and so, in all my imagined chivalry, I crawled out of the tent into the almost absolute darkness and added another log to the fire. It took a while for it to catch, and I nearly hollered with joy when it finally did. I was thinking mostly about warmth, and maybe just a little about my mother’s instructions on how to make a signal with smoke.

I must have finally fallen asleep out there, because in the misty half-light of dawn, when I awoke to the distant sound of voices and crashing of branches, my face was pressed against the dirt. I was still brushing dried leaves out of my hair when my father and Mr. Parker emerged from behind a thick grove of trees and arrived at our clearing.

Nancy Butler (whose sister worked at the bank) had apparently come forward as soon as word got out that we were missing. She gave elaborate details as to how much money Betsy had stolen from her father’s pickle jar as well as her own suppositions as to where Betsy and I were headed. One theory was that we were headed to California, you know, like the pioneers. Our fathers set out to find us, and my little midnight campfire, just five miles outside of town, had been a virtual beacon.

Betsy never found out how it was that our fathers happened upon us in the woods. I never confessed. That would have been admitting that I had
wanted
to be found, and I could never admit that. I guess I knew that if it hadn’t been for that fire, we might have wound up in Maine after all. That even if it was uncertainty I had heard in the quiet conversation we had inside that tent, Betsy had made up her mind, and once she set out to do something, there was no turning back. The reality was that if she
had
been a bird, she would have flown right into that window, even if I told her it was glass instead of air.

I
must have fallen asleep, because the screaming invaded my dreams. First it was the wind of a vicious storm, and then the howling of a wounded animal. By the time it woke me, it had become the cries of an infant. I sprung off the couch and raced to Shelly’s room, my heart beating so hard my chest ached. I turned on the light before I realized that the screaming was not coming from Shelly, who sat up in bed, startled and groggy.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asked, her voice raspy.

“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep.” I hurriedly tucked in her covers and turned out the light.

Another scream.

“That’s Maggie!” Shelly said, sitting up again.

“It’s okay, honey. I’ll go check on her. Stay here.”

I walked quickly down the short hallway to my own room and knocked before I pushed the door open.

The curtains were open. Outside, the streetlights reflected off the cool green of the swimming pool and illuminated the room, making it look like an aquarium. It was raining; water streamed down the windows in slow sheets. I could see only the suggestion of Marguerite’s body under the covers. Convinced that perhaps it had indeed only been the wind, or an animal, I turned and headed out the door, but just as I was pulling the door shut behind me, she screamed again. I opened the door and turned toward the bed.

Marguerite was sitting up, her arms thrashing as if she were fighting someone off. Her wild punches struck the air, and she wailed, “Noooo!”

“Marguerite,” I said softly.

“Nooo!” she wailed again. She was kneeling on the bed now, her eyes half open and staring out the window.

The shimmering green made the whole scene subaquatic, a watery dream, and Marguerite a wailing siren.

“Maggie!” I said, loudly this time, trying her nickname instead.

She turned to look at me. Her face was streaked with tears, her hair wet with sweat. She was trying to catch her breath, panting with exhaustion. She stared at me, still stunned, for several moments until sleep left her. Her breathing slowly returned to normal, and a look of recognition came across her face. “It’s raining,” she said.

I nodded. “Are you okay?”

I could hear Shelly’s feet padding softly down the hallway. I didn’t have to turn around to know she was standing in the doorway.

Marguerite pulled the sheets around herself as if suddenly embarrassed, and nodded quickly. “I’m fine. The thunder scared me.”

“Okay,” I said, deciding not to argue. There was no thunder. No lightning. Only the softest rain outside. “Let me know if you need anything.”

As I left the room, I put my arm around Shelly’s shoulders and steered her back to her own room. She climbed up into her bed and pulled the covers under her chin; she would likely not even remember all of this in the morning.

“Love you to the bottom of the ocean,” she whispered, our ritual.

“And back to the top,” I whispered, kissing her head.

For the rest of the night, I sat up reading in the living room, waiting. But there was only the tapping of rain, the ticking of the clock, and the sound of my own exasperated breaths when sleep would not come.

The next morning the rain had stopped, and the air was cooler. It was Saturday, so I went to the bakery for doughnuts and then to the drugstore to pick up a copy of the
Free Press
. The train wreck was on the front page.
TRAIN DERAILS
: 29
DEAD
, 11
MISSING
,
PRESUMED DEAD
. I read the paper as I walked back to my building, narrowly missing the fire hydrant, the broken sidewalk, and another pedestrian. The roster read like those published in the paper during the war. I pored over the names, searching for some sort of clue. And finally, I found among the missing, now presumed dead,
Margaret Jones,
15, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A single ticket. No Mrs. Jones anywhere.

Inside my house, Marguerite, aka Maggie, née Margaret, was making pancakes. She was wearing a dress that was too young for her, and with her swollen belly looked even more so. The collar looked like a little girl’s dress. Her knees were exposed and bony.

Shelly was standing at the stove with a spatula, helping Marguerite flip the pancakes.

“I don’t like her playing with the stove,” I said, angry at the girl, whatever her name was.

“We’re
cooking
, Daddy. I’m not a little kid.”

“Do what your daddy says,” she said, swatting Shelly’s behind, and Shelly backed away from the stove obediently.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, smiling. “Just as soon as I flip this here flapjack. I don’t need no burned hot cakes.”

“In the other room, please,” I said, rolling my eyes toward Shelly, who was pretending to be absorbed in a hangnail.

In the living room, the girl sat down on the couch and looked up at me, those disconcerting eyes wide and attentive.

“Listen,
Margaret Jones
, or whatever the
hell
your real name is. I don’t know who you are, but I do know you didn’t get on that train in Louisiana. And your mother wasn’t on the train either. And now everybody in the world thinks you’re dead.” I had no idea where I was headed; I only knew that I was pissed that she’d lied to me.

She reached up then, desperate, and grabbed my hands. I was surprised by how warm they were, like two small birds, shuddering. Even though her eyes disturbed me, I couldn’t look away.

“Please,” she said. “I never
said
I got on the train in Louisiana. I come from Tuscaloosa. And I just lied about my name because I was scared. Marguerite is my cousin’s name.”

“You told me your mother was dead. That she was on the train. You
lied
to me.”

“She
is
dead. I ain’t got no mama. That’s the damned truth.” Her lip was trembling but her gaze was steady.

“And what about this aunt of yours? The one in Canada?”

“Daddy sent me away,” she said; she was crying now. I glanced quickly to the doorway to make sure that Shelly wasn’t eavesdropping.

“To your aunt?”

“He wants me to take care of this,” she said. “But I ain’t giving this baby to no stranger.”

“Your aunt is arranging for an adoption?”

She was silent.

“Your father will be looking for you. I’m sure he’s heard about the accident by now. I’m sure they’re both worried sick.”

“I promise, ain’t
nobody
looking for me. And I
ain’t
going back there,” she said angrily. Then she took a deep breath and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Please. Just let me stay until I figure out where else I can go. I’ll help you with Shelly. You don’t have to pay me or nothin’. I’ll keep your house. I’ll do the wash….” She squeezed my hands tightly as she spoke, and I thought then about her fighting ghosts with these tiny fists. I thought about the sound of her screams. About the cool green of that room and the terror in her eyes. There were a whole lot of things she wasn’t telling me, but there was one thing I knew for certain. She was terrified of something, and for some reason, she was trusting
me
to keep her safe.

“Maggie,” I said, shaking my head.

And she muttered, like a prayer,
“Please, please, please.”

H
eadlights flick on and then off, fireflies signaling each other in the darkness. The dirt parking lot is empty, except for the carnies’ trailers and these two vehicles, speaking to each other in flashes of light. Beyond this, the electric glow of the midway has been extinguished for the night; the only light now comes from a harvest moon. When the man opens his trailer door and peers outside, his face is illuminated by this eerie orange glow. It is quiet. He has no idea that they are waiting for him.

The air still smells of the midway: sweet fried dough, greasy French fries, lemon ice. This is the smell of childhood. Of sweetness. Of everything good in the world. But tonight, as Harper waits for this man whose name he doesn’t even know, as his own childhood becomes more distant than God, Harper feels nothing but rage.

When the man ducks back into the tiny trailer, Harper feels his pulse quicken. He looks through the windshield at the truck across the lot. Soon, the truck door opens, and Brooder’s hulking figure emerges. His stride is fast and certain as he makes his way to the trailer. Ray, who has been silent until now, looks at Harper then, asking the question whose answer will change Harper’s life forever.

“You sure?”

And because everything is gone, leaving only this perfect rage, there is only one answer. He nods, and Ray puts the key in the ignition.

I
saved Betsy’s life once. I’d like to be able to say it was an act of courage, a selfless and fearless moment of sheer heroism, but the reality of that moment is that it was preceded by panic, and I acted too slowly. She almost slipped through my fingers. I got lucky, really.

After Betsy’s mother was sent away, Mr. Parker entrusted her to our family. He must have thought that because my mother was home all day that she had some sort of tether on me. What he didn’t know was that my mother lived inside a world of books; it would have taken a natural disaster to pull her out of that world, and even then she would have come out kicking and screaming. My mother, stuck in Two Rivers with a head full of unfulfilled dreams, escaped every chance she got via the Two Rivers Free Library—her library card both passport and necessary currency for her travels. And with my mother’s freedom came my own. If I felt like fishing from sunrise to moonrise at the river, if I wanted to walk the train tracks from Two Rivers to New York City, as long as I was home for dinner, I could have. Betsy and I were left to our own devices—at least until the sun went down.

There was a kid’s fort in the woods beyond the elementary school. We never saw anybody playing in it, but sometimes we would discover things inside that we swore hadn’t been there before: a Strato-Space cap gun, a moth-eaten coonskin cap, some plastic submarines. The first few times we closed ourselves inside the garrison made of plywood and corrugated tin, we half expected to be ambushed. After a while, though, it was clear that whoever had built the fort had probably grown too old for it and abandoned it. Betsy and I, on the other hand, kept going to our borrowed fortress long after we’d outgrown the games of our childhood. When pure imagination would no longer suffice as entertainment, we still returned to this rusty place. Inside the tin walls, during storms, it sounded like music. We’d sit there for hours sometimes, smoking stolen cigarettes or fabricating elaborate plans for one project or another. It was our respite. Our escape.

The day I saved Betsy’s life, we had plans to remodel the fort. Betsy wanted to repair the leaky roof, and I planned to build a secret hiding space beneath the dirt floor. In my father’s junkyard basement, I’d found an old safe, complete with a key. I pulled it all the way to the woods in my old Radio Flyer wagon. The safe was small in size (not much bigger than a shoe box) but it had to have weighed fifty pounds. It was a struggle, but I’d gotten it there, and as Betsy fought with some discarded shingles, I dug a hole. I had also absconded with my father’s only shovel, all metal and much too large for this job. I would have probably done better with a trowel.

It was overcast, cold in the woods. Betsy was wearing one of her mother’s old sweaters. It was unraveling at the cuffs, some forgotten thing left to the moths and salvaged by Betsy. It was the color of a green olive, but cashmere, and soft. Betsy rarely took it off on days like these. I liked the way she looked in that sweater. It hugged her shoulders, her small breasts. It was so soft, sometimes I had to resist the urge to reach out and stroke her.

I was so engaged in my task, in the efforts of removing both soil and rock from the ground, that I barely noticed when it started to rain. The fort was at least partially covered; the first few drops could have just been cold sweat dripping from my brow.

“It’s raining,” Betsy said, standing with her hands on her hips, looking down at me, squatting next to my hole. My legs were cramped, my back stiff.

“Come in then,” I said, and she crawled in next to me, gazing up at the half-finished roof above us. The rain tapped at the tin, sporadic. “It won’t last,” I said. My father had built a machine once that could predict the weather. It was part barometer, part wishful thinking. I trusted my senses more than I trusted that contraption. And today I sensed that the heavy clouds that had made the woods grow suddenly dark were transitory.

Betsy sat down next to me and inspected my work. “That’s a good hole,” she said.

I nodded, pleased. “Help me put the safe in?”

“Sure.” Betsy was pretty strong for a girl, but I still took on most of the weight as we positioned the safe over the hole.

“Now let go,” I said, and as we did, the safe dropped perfectly into the ground, and only the door was exposed.

“It’s a good hiding place,” Betsy said. The air rumbled, low and deep.

My father’s machine measured sound waves, their depth and distance. Predicted the approach of thunder.

“We could keep money in there,” Betsy said, as the rain grew stronger.

“Cigarettes,” I said.

“I’m going to put my diary in there.”

The idea of Betsy’s private journal, her innermost thoughts, residing next to a pack of my mother’s Kools was almost more than I could bear.

Thunder cracked again, followed shortly after by a flash of light. The whole forest was illuminated for a moment. Betsy grabbed my arm and my heart flew.

“My father takes sleeping pills,” she said. Bravely. “I could get some of those.”

Suddenly the safe was starting to feel dangerous.

“I’ve got to figure out something to put over it to hide it. Maybe bricks or something.”

“Nah, you should just cover it with dirt. Better camouflage.” Betsy stuck her hand out through a makeshift window and pulled it back in. “It’s pouring.”

We sat inside the shack, shoulder to shoulder, trying to light one soggy cigarette from the pack I’d left outside with an equally soggy pack of matches, and the rain did not subside. It was nice in there. She linked her arm in mine, and I couldn’t tell which was softer—the sweater or her skin.

“What time is it?” Betsy asked.

I checked my watch, a brand new Elgin railroad wristwatch, a gift from my father for my fourteenth birthday. It cost him an arm and a leg as well as three separate arguments with my mother, but it had been designed by engineers to be accurate to the second, which was something important apparently only to railroad workers and my father. “Almost four-thirty,” I said.

“Shit,” Betsy said. “Aunt Hanna and Uncle Paul are coming over for dinner. I was supposed to put the roast in at three-thirty.”

“We can make a run for it,” I said, peering out the window at the glistening trees.

Thunder rolled under us, making the fort shudder.

“Let’s go,” Betsy said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me to my feet. My back was aching from the dig. I put the shovel in the wagon, and I pulled it behind me as we dashed from the fort to the nearest tree, which provided little by way of cover. Rain pelted our skin and lightning flashed again. Every branch on the tree became a dark silhouette against the white sky. When the rain lessened for a moment, we ran again, this time toward the edge of the woods near the school parking lot. We stood underneath a tree, waiting for the rain to stop beating the leaf-covered ground, but it would not abate.

One thing my father’s storm machine had taught me was that thunder and lightning went hand in hand: that there was rarely one without the other. I would never have admitted this to Betsy, but I was afraid of lightning. My mother knew a boy who was struck dead by lightning on a baseball field. So when thunder roared again, incessant and angry, I held on to Betsy, whose hair was drenched. “Wait.”

“I
can’t
,” she said, clearly irritated and cold now. She was shivering. “I told my dad I’d have dinner ready by six. I’ve got to
go.
” And with that, she pulled away, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t say it hurt my feelings to have her wriggle away from me.

She ran toward the parking lot, and I watched her navigate rocks and trees, her long braid swinging behind her. I stayed under the tree, waiting for the inevitable flash of lightning. I kept my eyes on Betsy, watching from afar as she first ran and then slipped on the wet leaves and fell. Before I had time to think, I found myself repeating her haphazard path toward the edge of the woods. The sky burst into a kind of white fire, and I shielded my eyes as if from the sun. I was blinded, and suddenly deafened by a loud crack. It sounded like the very earth was splitting open. When my eyes regained their focus, my ears still struggled to make sense of the dissonance. By the time I realized that the sound was of a tree first being ruptured and then crashing to the ground, my senses were so confused, I could barely discern where I was relative to the parking lot. Relative to Betsy. And when the tree came down, its descent both slow and adamant, I didn’t realize that Betsy, still sitting on the ground, likely with a twisted ankle or banged-up knee, was in its path.

I made my way to her as if I were skating, the ground was so slick. By the time I got to her, the tree had already landed and was laying across her lower stomach. It wasn’t a huge tree, just a skinny birch, but it had pinned her to the ground. On one side of the trunk were Betsy’s legs, and on the other side was the rest of her. Her eyes were closed. I fell to my knees and touched her hair. It was my first impulse. My second was to run. I thought that maybe if I ran quickly enough I could get to one of the houses near the school. I could call someone, an ambulance, her father. I even started to run when I realized how ludicrous my plan was. What I needed to do was lift the tree off her.

I looked at Betsy, still unconscious, and at the tree. “I’ll get it off you,” I promised. I knelt down next to her and tried to lift the tree. It wasn’t a big tree, but it was heavy. The pain in my back intensified with the effort. I would need to use something to act as a lever underneath the trunk. I remembered my father’s shovel. I located the wagon underneath the tree where I’d left it. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Betsy, who could have only been sleeping.

I studied the shovel, frantically trying to devise a scheme. I conjured all the physics and geometry lessons that might help. If I were to wedge the shovel part under the tree and step on the handle, the tree might come up, but who would pull Betsy out? If she didn’t wake up, or if she couldn’t move, this idea would be futile. And, if I were to release my weight from the shovel’s handle, then the tree would crush her. I got an idea then. If I were to put the handle under the trunk, and load the shovel with something heavy enough to lift the tree, then I could pull her out. Relieved and terrified, I shoved the metal handle well under the trunk, right near Betsy’s body, and looked around for something heavy enough to do the trick. The rocks that I found were either too big and awkward to lift, or too light to make any difference. I filled the shovel with armloads of pebbles, and stared at the tree, which remained. Rain was in my eyes and ears, blurring everything when I remembered.
The safe
.

I ran as fast as I could back to the fort, dragging the wagon and shovel behind me. The dirt floor of the fort was muddy from the storm. It took every ounce of my strength and every last bit of my energy to dig the safe out of the ground. But somehow, I managed to lift it out of the muddy well and load it into the wagon. My legs shook with exhaustion as I pulled the safe to where Betsy and the tree had fallen.

Betsy’s eyes were open when I found her. “I thought you left,” she said, her voice small and afraid.

Ashamed, I shook my head.

The rest happened so quickly I can barely remember rigging up the contraption that would lift the tree off Betsy. What I do remember is this: the next flash of lightning made Betsy squeeze her eyes shut, but I willed mine to stay open. I remember the muddy trails her hair made on my arms as I pulled her out from underneath the tree. And I remember that she felt small in my arms when I cradled her.

“Wow. You saved my life,” she said, looking up at me, wide-eyed and grateful.

“Shut up,” I said, feeling just a little heroic but mostly relieved. We were sitting on the ground, and I was still holding her. I watched my fingers move the hair out of her eyes. I wanted to kiss her. To hold her and kiss her and kiss her. I even closed my eyes for a minute, leaned toward her.

But then she sat up, brushed her hands off, and threw her shoulders back, wincing a little. “You saved my life, now I owe you mine.” She was all business. As if we’d just made a simple transaction.

“Nah,” I said, disappointed. “You don’t owe me anything.”

She nodded. “That’s what happens when someone saves your life. You owe them yours. It’s the truth.” She was dead serious, and it scared me.

“Okay then.” I laughed. “But I don’t plan on collecting anytime soon.”

Betsy broke three ribs that day, as well as her wrist. For the ribs she had to stay in bed for a whole week, but for the wrist she got a thick white plaster cast. And instead of being mad about it, Mr. Parker took me aside and shook my hand: thanked me for taking such good care of his little girl. I didn’t tell Betsy what he said, or that this whole incident was further evidence of my greater purpose in her life. Instead, I just asked to sign her cast. By the end of the summer, it was covered in Magic Marker drawings and signatures, but I knew mine was under there. The first.